i lie Deep Waterway 

I Setween tlie Great Lakes 
anti tlie Gulf of Mexico 


Development of the Deep Waterway in Relation 
to Conservation 




















/ 

The Lakes-to-the-Gulf 
Deep Waterway 
Association 



Headquarters, 914 New Bank of Commerce Building 
SAINT LOUIS, MO. 



CONTENTS 




Page 

1. An address delivered at the St. Louis Convention, November 26, 1910, 
by Lyman E. Cooley, Consulting Engineer Lakes-to-the-Gulf Deep 
Waterway Association — “The Waterway Problem,” including 


exhibits.. 5 

Exhibits— 

0. Interior Coast Lines and the Inland Seas—Map.4-5 

00. Relative Resources (in terms of)—France or Germany—Map . .4-5 

1. The Greater Mississippi River—Map.4-5 

2. Topography of the United States of America—Map.8-9 

3. Continental Waterway—Gulf to Gulf—Profile.8-9 

4. Waterway and the Alluvial Lands—Map...10-11 

5. Waterway—Chicago to Cairo—Profile. 8-9 

6. Upper Illinois River—Joliet to Hennepin—Map.16-17 

7. Upper Illinois River—Joliet to Hennepin—Profile.16-17 

8. Middle Mississippi River—Grafton to Cairo—Map.18-19 

9. Middle Mississippi River—Grafton to Cairo—Profile.18-19 

10. Basin of the Great Lakes above Niagara—Map.24-25 

11. Characteristic Canal Sections—Diagram.24-25 

12. Characteristic Canal Locks—Diagram.24-25 

13. Types of Shipping in Proposed Lock.24-25 


2. What the Presidents have said about our Waterway: 
Presidents— 


President George Washington. 27 

President Thomas Jefferson.27 

President John Quincy Adams. 28 

President John Tyler. 28 

President Abraham Lincoln. 28 

President Andrew Johnson. 29 

President Rutherford B. Hayes. 29 

President James A. Garfield. 30 

President Chester A. Arthur. 30 

President Grover Cleveland. 31 

President Theodore Roosevelt. 32 

President William H. Taft. 34 

3. Statistcial Report showing greatness of Mississippi Valley by Hon. Oscar 
P. Austin, Chief of Bureau of Statistics, Department of Commerce 
and Labor..... 39 


o. Of o. 

MAY 10 >12 





































Officers, Board of Governors, Executive 
Committee and Advisory Board of State Governors 

-of- 

<3 

The Lakes-to-the-Gulf Deep Waterway 

Association 

Headquarters, 914 New Bank of Commerce Building 

ST. LOUIS, MO. 


BOARD OF GOVERNORS 


President. 

First Vice-President. . 
Second Vice-President 
Third Vice-President. 
Fourth Vice-President 
Fifth Vice-President.. 

Secretary. 

Honorary Secretary 

Treasurer . 

Sergeant-at-Arms .. 


Wm. K. Kavanaugh 

E. S. Conway. 

Sidney M. Neely. 

Greenfield Quarles. 

Crawford H. Ellis. 

Charles Scott. 

Thomas H. Lovelace.... 
Wm. Flewellyn Saunders 
George H. Munroe. 
Thomas M. Hunter 


Philip Werlein.New Orleans, La. 

W. M. Kavanaugh.Little Rock, Ark. 

R. R. Bourland.Peoria, Ill. 

Frederick H. Kreismann. .St. Louis, Mo. 

James F. Buckner, Jr.Louisville, Ky. 

Thomas Wilkinson.Burlington, la. 

Dr. J. T. Atterbury.Estil, Miss. 

Newell Sanders.Chattanooga, Tenn. 

Clarence B. Douglas.Muskogee, Okla. 

Frank J. Waterous.St. Paul, Minn. 

Douglas White.Los Angeles, Cal. 

W. T. Bland.Kansas City, Mo. 

A. B. Beall.Sioux City, la. 

J. H. Moss.Milwaukee, Wis. 

M. J. Connolly.Dubuque, la. 

O. B. Barrows.St. Louis, Mo. 


St. Louis, Mo. 
Chicago, Ill. 
Memphis, Tenn. 
Helena, Ark. 

New Orleans, La. 
Rosedale, Miss. 
St.‘Louis, Mo. 

St. Louis, Mo. 
Joliet, Ill. 
Chicago, Ill. 


P. P. Byrd.. 

Lawrence Becker... 
Carl A. Westberg.. 

M. E. Leming. 

A. P. Clayton. 

Wm. Volker. 

T. K. Niedringhaus 

W. C. Lusk. 

E. T. Tucker. 

Wm. Stull. 

John L. Vance. 

Wesley R. Childs.. 

A. J. Houston. 

Frank C. Goudy... 
George Parsons 
J. D. Davison. 


Pine Bluff, Ark. 
.Harriman, Ind. 
Indiana Harbor, Ind. 
Cape Girardeau, Mo. 
St. Joseph, Mo. 

, Kansas City, Mo. 

St. Louis, Mo. 
Yankton, S. D. 

Tulsa, Okla. 

Omaha, Neb. 
Columbns, O. 

Kansas City, Mo. 
Beaumont, Tex. 
.Denver, Colo. 

.Cairo, Ill, 

. Kansas City, Mo. 


MEMBERS OF EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 


A. O. Rule. 

C. F. Wiehe. 

Chas. A. Plamondon 

James J. Hill. 

J. D. Barkdull,. 

F. N. Robertshaw.. . 


.St Louis, Mo. 
.Chicago, Ill. 
.Chicago, Ill. 

.St. Paul, Minn. 
.Natchez, Miss. 
.Greenville, Miss. 
Philip Werlein.... 


Thomas Wilkinson.Burlington, la. 

Wm. M. Kavanaugh ... .Little Rock, Ark. 

Walter S. Dickey.Kansas City, Mo. 

James S. Warren.Memphis, Tenn. 

Alexander Y. Scott.Memphis, Tenn. 

John M. Parker.New Orleans, La. 

.... New Orleans, La. 




V 


































































ADVISORY BOARD OF STATE GOVERNORS 


Honorable Emmett O’Neal. 

Richard E. Sloan. 

“ George W. Donaghey 

“ Hiram W. Johnson... 

“ John F. Shafroth 

Simeon S. Pennewill . 
“ Albert W. Gilchrist . . 

Hoke Smith. 

James H. Hawley .... 
Charles S. Deneen 
Thomas R. Marshall. 

Beryl F. Carroll. 

Walter R. Stubbs.... 
Augustus E. Willson. 
Jared Y. Sanders .... 
Frederick W. Plaisted 
Austin L. Crothers. .. 

Eugene N. Foss. 

Charles S. Osborn.... 
Adolph O. Eberhart.. 

Edmond F. Noel. 

Herbert S. Hadley_ 

Edwin L. Norris. 

Chester H. Aldrich .. .. 

Tasker L. Oddie. 

“ William J. Mills. 

Robert P. Bass. 

Woodrow Wilson. 

“ John A. Dix. 

John Burke. 

Judson Harmon. 

Lee Cruce. 

Oswald West. 

John K. Tener. 

Aram J. Pothier. 

44 Cole L. Blease. 

Robert S. Vessey. 

44 Ben. W. Hooper. 

O. B. Colquitt. 

William Spry. 

44 John B. Mead. 

44 William H. Mann. 

Marion E. Hay. 

William E. Glasscock.. 
Francis E. McGovern . 
Joseph M. Carey. 


Governor of Alabama, Montgomery. 

44 44 Arizona, Phoenix. 

I 4 44 Arkansas, Little Rock. 

44 44 California, Sacramento. 

44 44 Colorado, Denver. 

44 44 Delaware, Dover. 

4 4 44 Florida, Tallahassee. 

44 Georgia, Atlanta. 

44 44 Idaho, Boise. 

44 Illinois, Springfield. 

44 Indiana, Indianapolis. 

44 Iowa, Des Moines. 

44 Kansas, Topeka, 

44 44 Kentucky, Frankfort. 

44 •* Louisiana, Baton Rouge. 

44 44 Maine, Augusta. 

44 44 Maryland, Annapolis. 

4 4 44 Massachusetts, Boston. 

44 44 Michigan, Lansing. 

44 Minnesota, St. Paul. 

44 Mississippi, Jackson. 

44 Missouri, Jefferson City. 

44 Montana, Helena. 

44 Nebraska, Lincoln. 

44 ' 44 Nevada, Carson City. 

44 New Mexico, Santa Fe. 

44 New Hampshire, Concord. 
44 New Jersey, Trenton. 

44 New York, Albany. 

44 North Dakota, Bismarck. 

44 4 4 Ohio, Columbus. 

44 Oklahoma, Guthrie. 

44 Oregon, Salem. 

44 Pennsylvania, Harrisburg. 

44 Rhode Island, Providence. 
44 South Carolina, Columbia. 
44 South Dakota, Pierre. 

44 Tennessee, Nashville. 

44 Texas, Austin. 

44 Utah, Salt Lake City. 

44 Vermont, Montpelier. 

44 Virginia, Richmond. 

44 Washington, Olympia. 

44 West Virginia, Charleston. 
44 Wisconsin, Madison. 

44 Wyoming, Cheyenne. 




















































































































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AN ADDRESS 


By LYMAN E. COOLEY of Chicago 

CONSULTING ENGINEER LAKES-TO-THE-GULF DEEP 
WATERWAY ASSOCIATION 

ST. LOUIS CONVENTION, NOVEMBER 26, 1910. 


I am here, not to make a formal address, but to give you a 
running talk on nine exhibits which were prepared by order of the 
officers of the Lakes-to-the-Gulf Deep Waterway Association in order 
to illustrate their cause before the committees of Congress. 

In presenting the matter to the House Committee on January 28 
it took five hours to cover the subject. This was not because I had 
so much to say, but because the exhibits had so much to say. The 
effect was hypnotizing, paralyzing or otherwise, for the committee 
unanimously reported in favor of our proposition and it passed the 
House by practically a unanimous vote. 

On February 28 the same program was carried out in the Senate, 
but it took only four and a half hours to cover the matter, and the 
Senate Committee and the Senate, with one dissenting vote, approved 
our program and passed it up to the President of the United States, 
and Senator Bourne of Oregon remarked that if we didn’t get what 
we wanted it was because we did not ask for it. 

I then presented these exhibits on April 7 for an hour and a half 
before the Executive of the United States in the White House; but 
it was five months later, September 7, when he felt called upon to act, 
and by that time he had forgotten which side of the question I was on. 

This map, No. 1, is large enough for a committee room, but 
hardly large enough for this audience to see well, so I will describe 
it a little more fully. It represents the Continent of North America, 
between the Gulf of Mexico and the Republic of Mexico, and the 
northern limit at which wheat, barley and potatoes will ripen. Upon 
this Continent, within these limits, we have 5,130,000 square miles, of 


6 Lakes-to-the-Gulf Deep Waterway Speech 


which 2,765,000 square miles lie in the greater Mississippi Valley, 
extending from the Gulf of Mexico to the potato, wheat and barley 
limit on the north and the Rocky Mountains on the west and the 
Allegheny Mountains and the Niagara frontier, and James and 
Hudson Bay on the east. 

A study of the economic potential of this Continent, the arable 
resources, the soil capacity, or, in other words, the capacity for carry¬ 
ing population, was made by me some eight or ten years ago in an 
official capacity, with the aid of a considerable corps of assistants. 
We undertook to put the economic value on all the soil resources in 
the United States and British North America, making due allowance 
for the partial value of about 1,500,000 square miles of semi-arid ter¬ 
ritory, the high sterile regions and the rocky areas, and for the fring¬ 
ing out in value toward the potato and barley limit on the north. 
We estimated the potential of the greater Mississippi Valley at 
1,980,000 out of a total area of 2,765,000 square miles, which is an 
area almost as great as the whole of Europe. This is the greatest 
single estate for the habitation of man laid out on this globe. Take 
this area of some two million square miles, the economic value of the 
valley, and it is equal to ten countries like France or ten countries 
like Germany. On the basis of the population in France it would 
carry over four hundred million people. On the basis of the popula¬ 
tion in Germany it would carry over six hundred million; on the 
basis of the population as it exists in parts of China and India it 
would carry over one billion people. In other words, it is capable 
of carrying comfortably all the people in the world today. That is 
what the Mississippi Valley means. (Applause.) 

This greater Mississippi Valley represents over five-eighths of 
the economic value of the entire Continent north of Mexico and 
south of the barley and potato limits. The aggregate value is 
3,140,000 square miles, of which 610,000 square miles lie on the 
Atlantic frontier and 550,000 square miles on the Pacific frontier, so 
that nearly two-thirds of the potential value of the Continent for 
carrying population lies within the valley limits. The proportion in 
Canada is about 30 per cent of the total; in other words, within the 
valley Canada would have three areas equal in potential to either 





By Lyman E. Cooley of Chicago 7 


France or Germany; the United States would have seven areas equal 
in potential to either France or Germany; and the total value of the 
Continent north of Mexico would be about sixteen areas equal to 
France and Germany. Some five eighths of the resources of this 
Continent lie in the Mississippi Valley; less than one-fifth of the 
total lies east of the Alleghenies; less than one-fifth lies west of the 
Rockies—the whole being equivalent to about sixteen nations like 
France or Germany. If you set off on the Gulf border two nations 
the equivalent of either France or Germany, you zvill have in the 
interior of this Continent, land-locked and remote from the sea, the 
potential of eight nations like France or Germany. 

What does this mean? These areas are far from the seaboard 
and solely dependent on railway and land transportation. They 
cannot compete or hope to develop their resources in cempetition 
with the more favored nations. Every important country in Europe 
except one has the sea on two borders, the land hards are short, and 
the rivers are improved and find the sea in a short distance. Here 
you have areas a thousand miles from the sea. Take Illinois, Iozva, 
Minnesota and Wisconsin—the area is greater than France or Ger¬ 
many, with possibilities greater than either of those countries. They 
can carry more population, they have more resources. Sit down and 
figure out, as an economic proposition, what is required of a railway 
system—the domestic work of this area, the relation with neighboring 
areas, and the connection urith the seaboard and the outside world — 
and then you will have an investment in railway transportation of 
two and a half to three times what this unit area would require if 
bordered by the sea, with its rivers improved like France or Germany. 
You cannot maintain or even develop the potential value of the inte¬ 
rior of this Continent in competition with the more favored nations of 
the world on such a basis. It is land-locked. You cannot take them 
down to the sea, these interior areas or units, but you can, for all 
practical purposes, bring the sea to their doors. (Applause.) 

On this map, if you follow it in detail, you will see the horizon of 
one thousand feet elevation, covering the great alluvial areas, the 
lower levels of the Continent, running through from the Gulf of 
Mexico to Hudson Bay and the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, more than a 





8 Lakes-to-the-Gulf Deep IVaterway Speech 


million square miles. You will see also a 2,ooo-foot, a 5,000-foot 
and a io,ooo-foot horizon. The arid regions are generally above the 
2,ooo-foot level, largely at the 5,000-foot level, the high steppe lands. 
The lowest valley line crosses northeasterly out by way of the Great 
Lakes to the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, with a summit elevation at 
Chicago under 600 feet. The lowest line northerly reaches to Hudson 
Bay by way of the Minnesota River, the Red River of the North and 
Lake Winnipeg, with a summit elevation of 960 feet, between Minne¬ 
sota and the Dakotas. Along these base lines will be developed, in 
the fulness of time, the greatest waterway for ships. When this is 
done, all the waterways between the two mountain chains and from 
the Gulf to the frozen zone, will be tributary to these base lines. 
Each unit area can then' develop on its individual merits, just as do 
the little States in Europe within their narrow confines, and each 
unit will be in the position of the most favored nation, with its 
frontier seaboard as effective as an actual seaboard, and even more 
effective. The Atlantic seaboard soon develops with rugged terri¬ 
tory back to the mountains, and the Pacific seaboard is also rugged, 
mountainous, and largely semi-arid, while back from these interior 
coast lines is the richest hinterland in the world, capable of carrying 
the densest population. 

The point of view that I ccm trying to present here is that we 
should develop those possibilities to the limit of the physical condi¬ 
tions, that no man should be permitted to make his mental limita¬ 
tions a measure for the future. No man can undertake to forecast 
the destiny of this Continent, but we can measure the physical condi¬ 
tions and so plan that development may go on progressively and 
ultimately meet all of the demands and provide for all the possibilities 
that I have called to your attention. (Applause.) 

Exhibit No. 2 is a topographical map of the United States. It 
is painted in colors to show horizons and elevations—the seashore 
margin rising to 100 feet, the next color to 500 feet, the next to 1,000 
feet, and then to 2,000 feet, then 5,000 feet and 10,000 feet. I will 
be very brief with this. If we had time we could go into it at great 
length and instructively. If you study that map closely you will see 
the lowlands, less than 500 feet in altitude, extending up to within 








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By Lyman E. Cooley of Chicago 


forty miles of the city of Chicago. A 6oo-foot horizon would go 
through to the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. On the east the only place 
where the 500-foot color reaches through is the Mohawk Valley 
from Lake Ontario. If you look along the Allegheny Mountains 
you will see the drab colors up to 2,000 feet, so there is no route for 
a waterway there except around by the north or away south by 
Georgia. On the west you have the high altitudes shown in the 
grays. If you draw a line north and south dividing the United 
States into equal parts, one and a half million square miles east and 
one and a half million square miles west, the line of division is practi¬ 
cally on the semi-arid line, which coincides substantially with the 
2,ooo-foot contour of elevation. Taking the economic value of the 
United States east of this line at one and a half million square miles, 
the west may be taken at six hundred and fifty thousand square 
miles, or about forty per cent of its area; so the economic value of 
the western half is only a fraction of the eastern half. There are no 
important waterways in the western half except two—the Columbia 
River running west and the Missouri River to the east. I have put 
on a heavy line, which only a few of you can see at this distance, 
showing the route from the Gulf to the Lakes and out through the 
Saint Lawrence. Now, seven of these unit areas of which we have 
spoken lie in the Mississippi Valley south of the international boun¬ 
dary, and five of them are land-locked, and the total equivalent in 
the Lhiited States is eleven areas like France or Germany, two on 
each seaboard and seven in the Mississippi Valley. 

Gentlemen, this third exhibit (pointing to map) shows the profile 
from the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, by way of 
the Great Lakes, a distance of 3,300 miles. Following up this line, 
we have New Orleans, Red River, Natchez, Vicksburg, Memphis, 
Cairo and the Ohio River, St. Louis and the Missouri River; then the 
Illinois River, and then we climb by the Upper Illinois to the Drain¬ 
age Canal, a little steep declivity there, and then by the Drainage 
Canal to Chicago and Lake Michigan, then through Lake Huron, 
Lake Erie, Lake Ontario, down the Saint Lawrence by Montreal and 
Quebec, and then out to the Gulf. Chicago is practically at the 
midway point, 1,700 miles from the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and 






IO 


Lakes-to-the-Gulf Deep Waterway Speech 


I,600 miles from the Gulf of Mexico, and its altitude, i. e., low 
water in Lake Michigan, is 580 feet above sea level. That altitude 
is less than the height of the Washington Monument at the National 
Capital. You have buildings in St. Louis rising above the level of 
the Chicago divide. This route was used by the explorers and 
fur traders from the beginning, and from early times was considered 
the line of domain which the French and Spanish tried to retain. 

Even in the treaty of partition between Great Britain and the 
United States, following the Revolution, we had short-sighted people 
east of the Allegheny Mountains—some of their decendants are there 
yet—who were willing that the western boundary of the colonies 
should be fixed at the Allegheny Mountains, and it was only the 
genius of Ben Franklin and the intrigues of the French and Spanish 
courts which brought Great Britain finally to the idea that she must 
let the colonies have the land west to the Mississippi in order to 
protect herself. You ought to call this area west of the Alleghenies 
the Franklin Annex. Only one man east of the Alleghenies really 
understood the potential of the west. 

On this profile is a legend, and I have been carrying a chip on 
my shoulder for over a year on account of it, waiting for somebody 
to call me. It states that twenty-four feet of water can be had from 
the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, 3,300 miles, for 
less than the cost of the Panama Canal. (Applause.) 

I stated that before the House Committee, and I have stated it 
over and over again, and I waited for somebody to pick me up, but 
nobody has opened his mouth. I stated it before the Senate Com¬ 
mittee, and I stated it to the President of the United States. I stated 
it to the Board of Engineers, and I have stated it whenever I had 
an opportunity, and there is nobody who has taken issue with me 
yet. It is a fact. (Applause.) 

I want to bring clearly before you, gentlemen, this proposition. 
We are in favor of the Isthmian Canal. Some of us had differences 
as to where and how it ought to be built, but the project itself we 
are all for. We want to see it completed. No one deprecates the 
expenditure, whether it is five hundred millions or less; but I want 











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LAKES-TO-THE-GULF DEEP WATERWAY ASSOCIATION, | 
A, _ V/Sh. „ CONSULTING CNOINEEr' 


Xhe Overflow lAnps along the Deep Waterway, are fourfold the Cultivated Area of the best days of 
Redeemable Alluvium along the Navigable Rivers Afip the Gulf iyiargin exceeds the Irrigable Lands of the 


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JANUARY. 1910 


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II 


By Lyman E. Cooley of Chicago 


to say that the value of the Panama Canal to this country is a baga¬ 
telle compared to this proposition of twenty-four feet of water from 
the Gulf of Saint Lawrence through the core of the Continent to the 
Gulf of Mexico. (Applause.) 

Gentlemen, No. 4 is the Lakes-to-the-Gulf route from Chicago 
to the Gulf of Mexico. (Applause.) The route is a little longer than 
that map. (Laughter.) On that map you will find the valley from 
Chicago shown by the bluff lines, down to Cairo; and in blue colors 
below Cairo, you will find the alluvial lands that are subject to 
overflow, and it is to that feature particularly, aside from what you 
can see on the map, to which I wish to call your attention. 

There are in the valley from Chicago to the Gulf of Mexico 
thirty-two thousand square miles of land, more than twenty million 
acres, subject to overflow. All but two or three thousand square 
miles of this land is south of Cairo in what is known as the delta 
region, and ninety million dollars of the estimate which has been 
made by the Board of Engineers are for revetments to hold the banks 
in order to conserve these lands and protect the levee system. When 
you take that out, less money is required to develop the Lakes-to-the- 
Gulf Deep Waterway than is required to develop the Ohio River for 
a depth of nine feet. (Applause.) 

This empire of alluvium is right here. Some of our people are 
going to the far West, some are going up into Canada, hunting for 
lands, and we have them at our doors—the richest in the world. We 
have five thousand square miles of land in the State of Illinois that 
only require drainage or protection, an area greater than Connecticut, 
greater than Porto Rico—in Illinois alone. South of that we have 
this twenty million acres of land. There was never cultivated in the 
best days of the Pharaohs in all Egypt over five million acres of 
land. Here, under a climate as favorable, are four Egypts between 
Cairo and the Gulf. Egypt in her best days carried ten millions of 
population, as estimated by historians. By the same tokens this area 
will carry forty millions of people. Take the Gulf margins from 
Mobile to. Galveston. There are several million acres of land that 
you can add to it, to be reclaimed from the Gulf. Go up these tribu¬ 
taries for a hundred miles and add their bottom lands and you will 









12 


Lakes-to-the-Gulf Deep Waterway Speech 


have over thirty million acres. I submit to you the proposition that 
within these limits and on the margin of the Lakes-to-the-Gulf 
• Waterway territory and in the broad ends of the tributary valleys, 
you have an extent of alluvial lands, subject to overflow, of greater 
intrinsic value than all the lands that can be reclaimed from the 
1,300,000 square miles in the semi-arid region, estimated at fifty 
million acres. About six per cent of that great semi-arid area is all 
that is to be reclaimed or redeemed for agriculture. Here are these 
lands along these waterways and on the coast of the Gulf, which are 
to be redeemed, with soil nine to twenty feet deep, low-lying, with a 
mild climate, capable of producing all the products to which the cli¬ 
mate is suited. That is what I wish to call to your attention. 

Then there is the conservation side of the waterway question. 
This will enhance the value of these lands, they will become worth 
two hundred dollars an acre; we have lands in Illinois that are worth 
that, these rich alluvial lands, when they are brought under cultiva¬ 
tion. This means one bit of real estate worth four billion dollars. 
This will develop the water power in Illinois, and along the Missis¬ 
sippi between St. Louis and Cairo, give you in time one million horse¬ 
power and four hundred million in value. The sanitary value in 
Chicago and the State of Illinois alone represent one hundred and 
fifty million dollars, the equivalent of any other treatment; you have 
also the sanitary redemption of all the lowlands. There are to be 
town sites and industries. You have in sight five billion in value at 
present prices, as a by-product of the waterways. If you choose to 
take the conservation side and forget about the waterway, you can 
produce all these values on their merits and have the waterway as a 
by-product. (Applause.) 

Now take it on a different basis. Every alluvial acre of land on 
the Egyptian basis will carry two people. You can support forty 
million people on these lands that are to be redeemed through con¬ 
servation. Look at the census and see what is the worth of a man 
in this country as a source of wealth—he will scale up about $1,250 
per head of population. That means fifty billions of dollars as the 
potential value, when you come to look at it as an ultimate resource 
for carrying population. 






By Lyman E. Cooley of Chicago 


13 


Exhibit 5 is the profile showing elevations along the water line 
by way of the Chicago Drainage Canal, the Illinois River, the Middle 
Mississippi River, from Lake Michigan to Cairo—the real problem 
of the Lakes-to-the-Gulf Waterway which we have to consider from 
an engineering standpoint. The part below Cairo belongs to the 
Ohio River as much as it belongs to us, and the improvement of that 
part, as I have tried to show you, is a problem of conservation. 
They talk about nine feet in the Lower Mississippi and they claim 
to have it now, with the modern hydraulic dredges and the regular 
annual expenditure. This proposed nine feet means nothing more 
than you have now. The holding of the banks on the Lower Missis¬ 
sippi River from Cairo to the Red River, is believed by every 
hydraulic engineer to produce automatically not less than fourteen 
feet, and by the greatest opponent of this project, Gen. Marshall, 
twenty feet is admitted as a probable result. So the production of a 
deep waterway from Cairo to the Gulf can be relied upon when the 
banks are protected, and when that is consummated it will produce 
fourteen feet or more, with some channel correction in localities across 
individual bars, and this means twenty-four feet for all but one 
hundred and twenty days of the average year. The next fellow— 
we don’t undertake as engineers to say that the next fellow will not 
know as much as we do and a little more, will not have more 
resources—will be encouraged, if we have produced such results, to 
complete the job. Give him a chance. 

This profile starts in at Lake Michigan. You see there the 
Chicago Drainage Canal across the divide, twenty-four feet deep, 
thirty-six miles long, and capable of carrying fourteen thousand 
cubic feet of water per second when it has been completed, i. e., 
when the feeding channels from Lake Michigan have been developed. 
That volume is one-third of the standard low-water volume passing 
St. Louis and is seven times the low-water volume at St. Paul. That 
is the capacity of the Chicago Drainage Canal. At present they are 
sending through there officially and legally 30 per cent of this ulti¬ 
mate volume. 

The next stretch below the Drainage Canal of sixty-one miles, 
and for which we have some larger maps that will appeal later, is the 







14 


Lakes-to-the-Gulf Deep Waterway Speech 


rock-bound portion of the valley, the upper Illinois valley, covering 
the declivity of one hundred and forty-six feet between the end of 
the Drainage Canal and Utica, in which it is proposed to construct 
five locks and four intermediate pools. 

From Utica to Grafton we have the alluvial division of the 
Illinois River, two hundred and thirty miles, with a declivity of only 
twenty-eight feet, hardly enough to encourage the water to run 
down hill. We have to make a deep channel in this river to keep 
the stream from filling up. It is now filling up, but if we can produce 
eighteen to twenty-four feet and fill it with a sufficient volume of 
water, we will make a strong current which will maintain the chan¬ 
nel. That is one of the reasons for deep water through the Illinois 
valley, and anything short of that means perpetual maintenance. 

We now come to the middle Mississippi, from Grafton to Cairo, 
and that has been the stumbling block, tzvo hundred and twelve miles, 
writh a declivity of one hundred and thirty-two feet, or seven inches 
to the mile. It has got too much energy, it runs down hill too fast, 
and nature, in order to present a resistance to this steep declivity, 
has spread the river out wide, and every Hood that comes along digs 
up new resistances in bars. We can not handle any such river for 
any large depth without taking out a part of this energy. That is 
fundamental. You can scratch it here and there and get eight or 
nine feet and maintain it for all time. You have got to change the 
nature of the stream. It has got too much ginger in it. You have 
got to treat it as you would a small boy, take some of the ginger out 
and then he will attend Sunday-school and mind his ma. (Laughter 
and applause.) 

We propose to do that by constructing two dams, one at Jeffer¬ 
son Barracks and one at Commerce, taking out a part of this declivity, 
and regulating the river on what is left, thus getting a deep channel. 
Nature automatically will do this. It will be produced quicker if 
assisted by man, and you will get a result, relatively speaking, such 
as there is from the Red River to the Gulf of Mexico, where we have 
a slope of one and a half inches to the mile carrying the entire drain¬ 
age and all the washings of the Mississippi Valley, in a section one 






By Lyman E. Cooley of Chicago 


hundred and fifty to two hundred feet deep, and one-third to one-half 
mile wide. That is the solution. (Applause.) 

Incidentally you can convert the slope which you take out and 
which you concentrate in these dams into water power. I have esti¬ 
mated, as a preliminary step for fourteen feet, that we will have two 
hundred thousand horse-power at each site, which will pay a revenue 
on a valuation of four hundred dollars per horse-power. You can 
figure it up as a conservative proposition. When we have produced 
twenty-four feet, when we have treated the Upper Mississippi and 
some of the other tributaries on the basis of conservation, we will 
have eight hundred thousand horse-power at the two sites, or a mil¬ 
lion horse-power, according to how far you may regulate and 
equalize the flow of the stream. In other words, with this project 
rationally carried out, leaving to the rivers only that fall which is 
necessary to have the water run in a tractable course and one that you 
can control and maintain, you will take out eighty per cent of the 
fall between Chicago and Cairo, and convert it into water power. 

Now you will notice here, and I should have called your atten¬ 
tion to it on the longer profile from the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf 
of Saint Lawrence—you will notice how relatively flat the Illinois 
valley is from Utica to Grafton, only a twenty-eight-foot fall, and 
that flat slope will extend to St. Louis when one of these dams is 
constructed. I have placed that dam provisionally at Jefferson Bar¬ 
racks. There is a question about the best site. Something has been 
said in the newspapers about this dam site. The foundation will be 
about seventy feet below low water, but if that tries anybody’s nerve, 
if the Engineering Board don’t see their way clear, they need not 
condemn the project, because they can place the dam at any other 
locality preferred. If you should see such a reason given in the 
report of the Board, you can recall Tom Reed’s aphorism, “Reasons 
are what men invent to justify the things which they wish to do.” 
(Applause.) 

I started out all right, but went off on a side-track. I happened 
to think of that Board. I want to call renewed attention to' that 
section between Utica and St. Louis. Between Chicago and St. 
Louis turns all the east and west transportation of this Continent. 













16 Lakes-to-the-Gulf Deep Waterway Speech 


Every railroad route that carries east or west passes through that 
throat. A few turn toward the Gulf. Here is this waterway, this 
place of low declivity, this continental land and water cross-roads, 
like the Bosphorus of old, the land and water crossing between two 
continents, that carried the flickering light of civilization through the 
dark ages, a thousand years of night. In my opinion, if we build 
this waterway on a proper scale, that will be the great assembling 
point along this water route between Chicago and St. Louis, and on 
these flat grades you can develop sites for industries right in the 
bread-basket of the Continent. With combined land and water 
transportation, the assembling of material will be cheaper than any 
place on earth, and ships can be produced cheaply and loaded with 
their cargoes, to be carried to the uttermost parts of the earth. 
(Applause.) 

Exhibit Nos. 6 and 7 is a map and profile, which is not quite as 
long as what it purports to show. The map, on a scale of one inch 
to the mile, extends along the upper limits from Lockport to Utica 
and further, to the beginning of the Hennepin Canal. This map 
shows the route of that part of the waterway which is covered by 
the Constitutional Amendment of the State of Illinois. 

Below it you have a profile on the scale of two and one-half 
inches to the mile, from the end of the Drainage Canal at Lockport, 
sixty-one miles, down to Utica. That shows correctly the elevations, 
shows five descents or dams at which it is proposed to build locks 
and produce water power. At the end of the Drainage Canal— 
see the profile here—above Joliet, is a drop of forty feet. At a dis¬ 
tance of five miles and immediately below Joliet, is a drop of thirty- 
five feet. Sixteen to eighteen miles further down, below the mouth 
of the .Kankakee and above Morris, you have a drop of twenty feet. 
In the vicinity of Ottawa you have another drop of twenty feet. At 
the head of the alluvial valley at Starved Rock, you have the final 
drop of thirty-one feet; the total of 146 feet. All schemes for the 
improvement of the Upper Illinois have these five drops and four 
pools that you see in the red on the profile. The channel is shown 
as it will be for fourteen feet, and for a large part of the 
distance it is deeper than twenty-four feet, and the twenty-four-foot 






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LAKES-TO-THE-GOLF DEEP WATERWAY ASSOCIATION 


TIvLINOIs 

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PROJECT INTERPRETS WATERWAY 
AMENPMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION OF THE 

STATE OF ILLINOIS 

COVERING RIVER BETWEEN LOCKPORT^ UTICA 


PROJECT. 

JOLIET LEVEL / 

CHANNEL 24 FT. DEEP & 400 FT.WIPE.eETwetN pock walls. 

KANKAKEE,MORRIScAtj?^ OTTAWA LEVELS: 

PRELIMINARY CHANNEL, 14 FEET DEEP * 230FEET WIDE, on bottom. 
INCREASED CHANNEL, 19 FT. DEEP & 205 FT. WIDE on bottom 
INCREASED CHANNEL, 24 FT. DEEP & ISO FT. WIDE on bottom. 
ULTIMATE CHANNEL 24FEET DEEP 8 360FEET WIDE on bottom. 

- LOCKS.- 

24 FT. oh MITER SILLS, IIOFT.WIPE amp IOOOFT.LONG. 


CONSULTING ENGINEER. 


ULTIMATE WATER-POWER. 

LAKE WATER, 14.000 S.F., LAND WATER BELOW KANKAKEE RIVER 333S.F,, BELOW FOX RIVER 667 S.F. 
SANITARY DISTRICT, LOCKPORT 
STATE 




42,000 H.P. 


CONSTITUTIONAL amendment. 

THE WATERWAY AMENDMENT BY UNANIMOUS VOTE IN EACH HOUSE 
OCT. 16,1907; WAS SUBMITTED TO THE PEOPLE NOV.3,1908. 

AND WAS ADOPTED BY AH AFFIRMATIVE VOTE OF 692,522 AS 
A 6 AIN 8 T A NEGATIVE VOTE OF 195,177, 

IN A TOTAL VOTE OF 1,169, 330. 


JOLIET,_ 44,000 _ 

AUXSA3LE,_ 25,000_ 

OTTAWA._ 26,000_ 

STARVED ROCK, 36.000 131,000 H.P. 


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1 7 


By Lyman E. Cooley of Chicago 


line of depth can be seen also. It is estimated that the flow of water 
that will eventually come from Lake Michigan through the Chicago 
Drainage Canal, together with the natural flow of the river, will 
produce 173,000 horse-power, and with the revenue therefrom the 
State of Illinois proposes eventually to recoup itself for its expend¬ 
itures and contribution to the deep waterway. I will not go into 
that at length. 

A Delegate: Is there any question about the supply of water? 

Mr. Cooley : The latest authority in regard to the outflow of 
the lakes above Niagara is that it averages two hundred and twenty- 
five thousand cubic feet of water per second. We propose to actually 
take out fourteen thousand cubic feet. The effect will be something, 
of course, because you can not take away something and have it all 
left. That is a proposition in mental arithmetic. We have taken 
the position that the effect is not material, and whatever it is it can 
be remedied for a very small fraction of our investment, and that the 
major premise here is, you are entitled to take it if you do not 
materially injure your neighbor. It rests entirely with the authority 
of Congress. The Lake Carriers’ Association are the people who 
have stood guard on this question. The officers of that Association 
have assured me repeatedly that they were too broad to oppose the 
idea of a great waterway from the Lakes to the Gulf, and that when 
we are ready to act upon the matter and prepared to show them 
how the lake levels can be maintained, there will be no opposition 
from that quarter. (Applause.) I think that is absolutely correct. 
The only other opposition that I have heard of was developed by the 
hold-over Senator from the State of Michigan, and I believe his 
proposed colleague has something of the same objection. They very 
much fear that such a volume of water will so interfere with the 
currents of Lake Michigan as to destroy the peach crop on the east 
shore. That is one of the very grave questions which the U. S. Sen¬ 
ate has delegated to the Board of Engineers to pass upon. They will 
pass upon the question of whether the peach crop of the east shore of 
Lake Michigan will be affected. I hope their other conclusions will 
be as favorable as their findings on that point. (Laughter.) 









18 Lakes-to-the-Gulf Deep Waterway Speech 


President Kavanaugh : Someone asks you the question, 
What will you do with the sediment at Jefferson Barracks, if you 
dam the river at that point? 

Mr. Cooley : There will not be any. That is a mistake. I 
don’t wish to treat the question cavalierly, because it has been asked 
by the Board of Engineers itself by some very eminent engineers 
who have not thought of this matter, and by the Speaker of the House 
of Representatives. But I called attention to this proposition. We 
have the Mississippi River itself from the Red River to its mouth, 
with all the spoils of the Continent, without declivity and practically 
without current. At low water the tide runs up to Red River, three 
hundred miles, and the channel is deep, narrow and stable, the best 
part of the Mississippi River, with all that sediment going through. 
That is a pool held up by the Gulf of Mexico, an actual case. You 
can find such pools along the Missouri River, in any alluvial river, 
maintained between stable banks. The mistake is made, and it is a 
popular error, that the cussedness of rivers is due to the choking 
of the bed, but it is nothing of the kind—the choking of the bed is a 
phenomena of the excessive declivity of the river. Take the 
Missouri with an average declivity of ten inches to the mile, and it 
will have stable reaches, narrow and deep, on four inches to the 
mile, with the water running faster than on 2j4 feet to the mile. 
Where it is spread out and divided, the velocities can be maintained. 
The velocity will not be decreased in this pool. At high water the 
velocities will be practically the same as before. Whatever is un¬ 
necessary for the proper limits of the stream will fill up. We want 
it to fill up. You simply reform the river on a lower grade, on a 
different horizon. It is a little difficult, I can see, to grasp this; but 
after an explanation to the committees of Congress and the Board 
of Engineers, they seemed to be satisfied. 

Gentlemen, No. 8 is a map that shows the Middle Mississippi, 
from Grafton to Cairo, the portion which is considered the most 
difficult to handle of the entire route between the Lakes and the Gulf. 
It is the last refuge of the technical opposition to this project. You 
see there the general course of the river and the valley. It is a nar¬ 
row valley, relatively speaking, compared to what we have above and 








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BANK FULL STAGE, 606.000 S.F. 


HIGH WATER 606,0 10 CU.FT. PER SECOND 


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Ey Lyman E. Cooley of Chicago 


below. The great northern and western drainage here passes through 
the highlands, and there are no important tributaries. After the 
Missouri, the Mississippi and the Illinois have gathered together, 
they run nearly two hundred miles, and the valley then spreads 
out and receives the Ohio at Cairo. We have a steep declivity with 
high rocky bluffs. I have put a red band at the proposed site of a 
dam eight miles below the St. Louis bridge, and one proposed at 
Commerce, which are simply provisional as to sites. It will depend 
perhaps in some degree where rock is found at the best elevation 
and, in a large degree, on what location will produce the best harbor 
for St. Louis. 

Exhibit No. 9 is a profile that covers the Middle Mississippi 
itself, which has to be discussed especially, and was prepared for the 
class of people who can only see the hole in the doughnut. It shows 
the declivities and all the high-water lines and the volumes corre¬ 
sponding to each line between Grafton and Cairo. It shows all the 
proposed sites of two dams, one eight miles below the St. Louis bridge 
and one at the foot of the gorge at Commerce, about thirty miles 
above Cairo. With the aid of these two dams we can regulate the 
Mississippi River so as to produce this fourteen feet as an initial 
development, and later twenty-four feet, thirty feet or any depth you 
want. It is a question of how much of a fall you will take out by the 
dams and how much you will leave to the river bed, as to what depth 
you will produce in the river bed. I don’t propose to do this instantly, 
tomorrow; we will build the dams and when they are constructed a 
very moderate amount of work—that can be done in part while the 
dams are under construction—will give you a forty-foot fall at each 
dam and will give you two hundred thousand horse-power at each 
site, and enable you absolutely to control the flood limits. After 
the initial lowering of the river bed, the further development of the 
river is a matter which will go on automatically, and this can be 
hastened and directed whenever you feel the need of more water, and 
when you have resources to apply it—there is no limit if you design 
the original work properly. I don’t think that it will cost any more 
to obtain this result of fourteen feet than to attempt it in some other 
way, and the advantage will be that you have subdued this stream 







Lakes-to-the-Gulf Deep Waterway Speech 


and put yourself in position to go on at a relatively moderate expense 
hereafter and get more depth whenever you feel like it. That is the 
situation. 

The question has been raised by my friend in regard to the sedi¬ 
ment. After the reformation of the river bed on a different hori¬ 
zon, with a more economical channel, narrower and deeper, there will 
be the question of overflow, and that has also been raised, but in this 
treatment it is proposed to handle these floods opposite and above 
St. Louis within the limits of the extreme natural floods. In other 
words, there should be no flood greater than that in 1844, and it will 
be perfectly practicable to build the dam in such a manner that it will 
be sufficient for such a flood as that of 1844. Every wise man and 
every municipality and every agency that has sought to protect 
itself, has built or is building protection work that will amply provide 
against the flood of 1844. There would be some immediate effect 
perhaps where the people are negligent and have not provided proper 
protection works. The dam will raise the ordinary water within 
fifteen feet of where it was in 1844 at St. Louis, but it will also con¬ 
trol the entire fluctuations within that limit, and it makes it possible 
to have a harbor at St. Louis where you can have vertical docks, 
where you can load and unload your cargoes, as we do on the lakes 
or on the seaboard where the tide is not excessive. 

Now, when you come down to Commerce we actually elevate 
the river there, we actually raise the water line there, about ten feet. 
We do accentuate the floods above the proposed structure up as far 
as Grand Tower, and to meet that condition we will have to construct 
extra high and strong embankments above those that would be 
required to protect against the natural conditions. That means some 
additional expense. There are about sixty thousand acres of land 
involved in that proposition, but all of that land has to be treated 
by levees in any event, if it is to be reclaimed. You simply treat 
for an accentuated condition, and when it is so treated it is as avail¬ 
able as it would be without the dam. 

Now, gentlemen, we have completed the nine exhibits. I have 
to beg your pardon for pursuing this matter, much as I did when I 
was a professor and lecturer to students, because I have made no 





By Lyman E. Cooley of Chicago 21 


preparation to speak to you here today, and have only spoken as the 
exhibits suggested as we went along, and I am not in condition to 
speak, as I have a very bad cold. 

I want your attention to one or two propositions, and perhaps 
others if they occur to me on the spur of the moment. We have 
been through in the last twenty years a revolution in engineering 
methods. The construction of the hydraulic dredge and the ability 
to handle material in large quantities in river beds for 3 to 5 cents 
per yard, and less under certain conditions, in place of four to twenty 
times that amount, and the construction of cement masonry which in 
the early canal days cost from eighteen to twenty-five dollars per 
yard, and today costs from four to eight dollars per yard—all these 
and other things have made possible the dreams of twenty years 
ago. What the next twenty years will produce, I don’t know. I 
will bet something on it, and then I will refrain from setting my 
own mental limitations as a measure for the next fellow, which some 
people who criticise are in the habit of doing. They are unable to 
believe anything except what they themselves comprehend, and they 
imagine that that is the limitation on what the world is going to do. 
These men should be lawyers, who must have a precedent for every¬ 
thing, and judge the present and future by the past. It is different 
with the engineer. He is the man who brings things to pass. He 
takes back-sights, it is true, but only for the purpose of reversing 
his instrument for his fore-sights. We have engineers in my pro¬ 
fession who look wise and who appeal to the judgment of men who 
see only the hole in the doughnut, who are unable to reverse 
their instruments, and who do not possess the faculty characterized by 
Tyndale as the scientific use of the imagination. (Great applause, 
long and continued.) 

The engineer deals with the unprecedented and the unknown, 
but he determines his problems with the same certainty that the 
unknown point is fixed in location by two angles from a base line. In 
looking into the future the engineer who can not see beyond what 
has been done, does not deserve to be called an engineer—he is not 
an engineer. (Great applause.) 





22 Lakes-to-the-Gulf Deep Waterway Speech 


Now the thought I am coming to is this. We have talk about 
nine feet. It means absolutely nothing. (Tremendous applause.) 
I am not speaking on the question of whether it is useful or not, I 
am speaking on the physical side. It is just a little irritation (laugh¬ 
ter) of the forces of nature which may be resented. You do not 
change the regimen of the stream. You undertake to pacify it in some 
degree, a little scratching of the sides and bottom if nature will 
permit. 

Now, you can all bet on this as a safe proposition—that the 
water in the river and the depth thereof is not an accident. It means 
something in the cause of nature. Some engineers proceed on the 
theory that nature made a mistake of some kind and that all that is 
necessary to do is to get busy and do a little whittling and tickling, 
and all will be changed for the better. That is not true. You have 
got to change conditions to produce important results, and what you 
produce without changing the conditions is something uncertain and 
something requiring perpetual maintenance. That is the proposition 
that I want to put up to you. 

Now, you are going to change the conditions, you are going to 
secure the banks below Cairo, you are not going to let nature run 
wild and fill up your channels and wallow through the crossings with 
hydraulic dredges every year. You are going to fix the banks and 
stop erosion. What are the facts? Between Cairo and Red River, a 
distance of seven hundred and sixty-four miles, there is cut from the 
banks, in the average year, one billion yards of material, one billion— 
a square mile and a thousand feet deep. That is what the river 
gnaws out and takes away. There does not come to the river at 
Cairo from the Ohio, the Missouri and Upper Mississippi over four 
hundred million yards—that is, 40 per cent of the billion yards pro¬ 
duced locally in that stream. What goes out? Four hundred million 
yards go out annually into the Gulf of Mexico—not the identical 
stuff, but the equivalent of the stuff that passes Cairo. Say there are 
one hundred bends, each filling the crossing below, ten feet deep, for 
a couple of miles every year. You can not permanently increase the 
depth without controlling the stream—it is not possible, it is non¬ 


sense. 







By Lyman E. Cooley of Chicago 


2 3 


Now, you hold the banks, you reform the river. You stop this 
billion yards, take the task off the stream, and it takes care of itself. 
You produce fourteen to twenty feet, whatever comes from it. 

Now I want to carry that thought out a little and then I will 
obey my boss. (President Kavanaugh had stated that the time is 
short.) 

The proposition between St. Louis and Cairo has been pretty 
well thrashed out. The major proposition here is the surplus energy, 
and we are to get rid of as much of that as we can, that is, produce a 
type of river such as is habitual to one-half or one-third of the grade. 
We know by example and by calculation of characteristic sections of 
the river, what results will follow the change of declivity. There is 
no question about it. 

Now, come to the Illinois River. We have the same proposition 
in a different form. The building of the dam below St. Louis will 
carry the gentle grade of the Illinois River from Utica right to the 
city of St. Louis, thirty feet of fall in two hundred and seventy miles. 
You can make any depth you please. I have estimated that in sev¬ 
eral ways, and we can produce at least twenty-four feet from Chicago 
to Peoria and a preliminary depth of eighteen to twenty feet thence 
to St. Louis—the first crack out of the box. It is a mere problem of 
dredging mud. The natural river has not enough energy, but you 
can produce that by a deep section which does not eat up the energy- 
in friction, and from that deep section results an effective force which 
clears and maintains the stream. That is the general proposition for 
the lower Illinois River. 

Now, above there—study that profile. I have shown the location 
of the five locks and dams. You have twenty-four feet of water to 
the Drainage Canal just as soon as you build the locks and deepen 
the smaller fraction of the distance. 

I want to simply emphasize this proposition. Nine feet means 
nothing; nine feet is absolutely blighting to the situation in Illinois, 
makes it impossible. You can not carry the water nine feet that we 
must take out of Lake Michigan. We can not carry the water 
through the lower Illinois valley on nine feet. We can not carry a 





Lakes-to-the-Gulf Deep Waterway Speech 


third of it without endangering about four hundred thousand acres of 
bottom lands to a degree that is not to be contemplated. If we can 
not carry the water away we can not produce the water power. If 
we are to be held down to nine feet there is no need of any more 
water, and that kills the Chicago sanitary investment. We do not 
need to take any more out of Lake Michigan for nine feet—and I 
kind of suspect that that is the milk in the cocoanut. We lose out 
on the sanitary question, we lose out on the water-power question, we 
lose out on the waterway question, and we lose practically our whole 
investment in the State of Illinois (applause), and we have men in 
the State of Illinois who have not the wit to see it. (Laughter.) 
There is the whole proposition. The thing lies deeper than what 
you see on the surface. 

Now, I want to emphasize this fact further that you have got 
to change things to produce results, and you can not subordinate 
your project to the conditions as they now exist. You must change 
them. I am not referring to politics. I leave that to the junior Sena¬ 
tor from Illinois and Mr. Kavanaugh. I am referring to the condi¬ 
tions which God Almighty put in those streams. 

And now a word to my friends, the Illini, the Indian word for 
“the men,” and are we not Indians still? 

The territory of Illinois had its northern boundary at a parallel 
touching the south end of Lake Michigan, and Chicago was then 
in the territory of Wisconsin. Nathaniel Pope was territorial dele¬ 
gate and persuaded the Congress to shift the boundary to the present 
northern limit, in order that Illinois should have a coast on the 
unsalted seas, and in order that the great water route should lie 
within the confines of a single State. At that time the right of the 
nation to improve or build waterways was denied or questioned. Pope 
argued that the new State would thus become the commercial bond 
of union between the basin of the Saint Lawrence and the basin of 
the Mississippi, and thus forever insure the perpetuation of the Con¬ 
federacy. 

Illinois as a new State, in 1818, thus became the trustee of a 
purpose as broad as the Union, the custodian of an endowment that 





70 


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By Lyman E. Cooley of Chicago 


25 


is singular and pertains to the entire Continent. There are men 
among us who do not sense their responsibilities, who would subordi¬ 
nate opportunity to mere expediency, who would convert our endow¬ 
ment into by-products, who would blight the fruition of the dreams 
of Nathaniel Pope and his confreres who endowed Illinois with a 
sacred trust. 

Shall we swap our birthright for a mess of pottage? 

At the conclusion of his address Mr. Cooley was given an 
ovation. 











What Presidents Have Said About 
Our Waterway. 


GEORGE WASHINGTON. 

At the close of the Revolution, before going to Annapolis to 
resign his commission, in a letter to Marquis de Chastelleux, said 
in part: 

“Prompted by these actual obstructions, I could not help taking 
a more contemplative and extensive view of the vast inland navi¬ 
gation of these United States, and could not but be struck with the 
immense diffusion and importance of it; and with the goodness of 
that Providence which has dealt his favors to us with so profuse a 
hand. Would to God we may have wisdom enough to improve 
them.” 

GEORGE WASHINGTON. 

In a letter to William Irvine, October 31, 1788: 

“The extensive inland navigation with which this country 
abounds, and the easy communications which many of the rivers 
afford with the amazing territory to the westward of us, will 
certainly be productive of infinite advantage to the Atlantic States, 
if the Legislatures of those through which they pass have liberality 
and public spirit enough to improve them.” 

THOMAS JEFFERSON 

Seems to have been one of the first Presidents officially to 
express views on the subject of internal improvements. In his 
eighth annual message, November 8, 1808, in speaking of the surplus 
revenues, he said: “Shall it lie unproductive in the public vaults? 
Shall the revenue be reduced ? Or shall it not rather be appropriated 
to the improvements of roads, canals, rivers, education, and other 
great foundations of prosperity and union under the powers which 
Congress may already possess or such amendment of the Constitu¬ 
tion as may be approved by the State?” 



28 What Presidents Have Said About Our Waterway 


JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

In his fourth annual message on December 2, 1828, President 
Adams announced as one of the cardinal policies of the Govern¬ 
ment “the preliminary to great and lasting works of public improve¬ 
ments in the surveys of roads, examination for the course of canals, 
and labors for the removal of the obstructions of rivers and harbors, 
first commenced by the Act of Congress of April 30, 1824.” Six 
days later he submitted to the Senate a report from the Secretary of 
War concerning the practicability and probable cost of building a 
breakwater at the mouth of the Mississippi. 

PRESIDENT JOHN TYLER, 

On June 11, 1844, in vetoing a river and harbor bill, which in the 
parlance of today would be termed “pork barrel” bill, with much 
satisfaction called attention to the fact that he had approved a bill 
for the improvement of the Mississippi River and its chief tribu¬ 
taries, and certain harbors on the Lakes. The Mississippi, he said, 
belongs to no particular State or States, but is reserved as a great 
common highway of the commerce of the whole country, and there¬ 
fore may properly be improved at the expense of the whole country. 

JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

Speech delivered at Memphis when he presided over the con¬ 
vention for waterway improvement held in 1845: 

“I believe the free and uninterrupted navigation of these inland 
seas is within the peculiar province of the General Government.” 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

“The driving of a pirate from the track of commerce in the 
broad ocean and the removing of a snag from its more narrow path 
in the Mississippi River can not, I think, be distinguished in princi¬ 
ple. Each is done to save life and property, and to use the waterways 
for the purposes of promoting commerce. * * * The most 

general object I can think of would be the improvement of the 
Mississippi River and its tributaries.” 






What Presidents Have Said About Our Waterway 29 


ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 

In speaking of the argument of collecting tonnage duties so that 
rivers and harbors can be improved, answered the arguments raised 
now by persons not favorable to the Lakes-to-the-Gulf Deep Water¬ 
way project who declare that commerce does not demand it. Presi¬ 
dent Lincoln said: “We shall never make a canal by tonnage duties 
until it shall already have been made awhile so the tonnage can 
come into it.” 

' PRESIDENT ANDREW JOHNSON, 

In his second annual message, December 3, 1866, made the following 
reference to the country’s greatest river, the Mississippi: 

“As a subject upon which depends an immense amount of the 
production and commerce of the country, I recommend to Congress 
such legislation as may be necessary for the preservation of the 
levees of the Mississippi River. It is a matter of national impor¬ 
tance that early steps should be taken, not only to add to the effi¬ 
ciency of these barriers against destructive inundations, but for the 
removal of all obstructions to the free and safe navigation of that 
great channel of trade and commerce.” 

PRESIDENT RUTHERFORD B. HAYES. 

In the third annual message of President Hayes, December 1, 
1879, the only mention of inland waterway improvements was that 
of the South Pass of the Mississippi River, under contract with 
James B. Eads, of which he spoke in an optimistic vein. He said 
that the payment of a total of $4,250,000 for work done had accom¬ 
plished an increased depth in four years of from seven and one-half 
feet to twenty-six feet and a minimum width of two hundred feet. 

PRESIDENT RUTHERFORD B. HAYES, 

In his fourth annual message, December 6, 1880, called attention 
to the importance of the improvement of the Mississippi River in 
these forceful words: “A comprehensive improvement of the Mis¬ 
sissippi and its tributaries is a matter of transcendant importance. 
These great waterways comprise a system of inland transportation 





30 What Presidents Have Said About Our Waterway 


spread like network over a large portion of the United States, 
and navigable to the extent of many thousands of miles. Producers 
and consumers alike have a common interest in such unequalled 
facilities for cheap transportation. Geographically, commercially and 
practically, they are the strongest tie between the various sections 
of the country. These channels of communication and interchange 
are the property of the nation. Its jurisdiction is paramount over 
their waters, and the plainest principles of public interest require 
their intelligent and careful supervision, with a view to their protec¬ 
tion, improvement, and the enforcement of their usefulness.” 

PRESIDENT JAMES A. GARFIELD, 

In his inaugural message, March 4, 1881, said: “Our facilities 
for transportation should be promoted by the continued improve¬ 
ment of our harbors and great interior waterways.” 

PRESIDENT CHESTER A. ARTHUR, 

In his first annual message on December 6, 1881, said: “I advise 
appropriations for such internal improvements as the wisdom of 
Congress may deem to be of public importance. The necessity of 
improving the navigation of the Mississippi River justifies a special 
allusion to that subject. I suggest the adoption of some measure 
for the removal of obstructions which now impede the navigation of 
that great channel of commerce.” 

This was followed by a special message on April 17, 1882, 
directing attention to the accompanying recommendation of the 
Mississippi River Commission. Referring to the object sought, he 
9aid: “The constitutionality of a law making appropriations in aid 
of these objects can not be questioned. The safe and convenient 
navigation of the Mississippi is a matter of concern to all sections 
of the country; but to the Northwest, with its immense harvests, 
needing cheap transportation to the sea, and to the inhabitants of 
the river valley, whose lives and property depend upon the proper 
construction of the safeguards which protect them from the floods, 
it is of vital importance that a well-matured and comprehensive plan 









What Presidents Have Said About Our Waterway 31 


for improvement should be put into operation with as little delay 
as possible. 

“It may not be inopportune to mention that this Government 
has imposed and collected some $70,000,000 by a tax on cotton, in the 
production- of which the population of the Lower Mississippi is 
largely engaged, and it does not seem inequitable to return a portion 
of this tax to those who contributed it, particularly as such action 
will also result in an important gain to the country at large, and 
especially so to the great and rich States of the Northwest and the 
Mississippi Valley.” 

PRESIDENT GROVER CLEVELAND. 

On January 18, 1897, Mr. Cleveland transmitted to Congress 
the report of Messrs. James B. Angell, of Michigan; John E. 
Russell, of Massachusetts, and Lyman E. Cooley, of Illinois, who 
were appointed Commissioners to make inquiry and report, after con¬ 
ference with such similar Commissioners as might be appointed on 
behalf of Great Britain or Canada, concerning the feasibility of the 
construction of such canals as would enable vessels engaged in 
ocean commerce to pass between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic 
Ocean. 

In his message of transmittal Mr. Cleveland said: “The advan¬ 
tages of direct and unbroken water transportation of the products 
of. our Western States and Territories from convenient points of 
shipment to our seaboard ports are plainly palpable. The report of 
the Commissioners contains, in my opinion, demonstration of the 
feasibility of securing such transportation, and gives ground for the 
anticipation that better and more uninterrupted commerce, through 
the plan suggested, between the great West and foreign ports, with 
the Increase of national prosperity which must follow in its train, 
will not long escape American enterprise and activity.” Since this 
report was made the Canadians addressed themselves seriously to 
the subject and have quietly accomplished a Lakes-to-the-Gulf Deep 
Waterway by the Saint Lawrence River to the Gulf of Saint 
Lawrence. 





32 What Presidents Have Said About Our Waterway 


The foregoing indicates the views held by the Presidents pre¬ 
ceding the Roosevelt Administration on the subject of the improve¬ 
ment of our waterways so far as their views were expressed offi¬ 
cially. 

Public sentiment for the preservation and improvement of our 
waterways found its highest expression in the utterances of Presi¬ 
dent Roosevelt. 

Theodore Roosevelt was the first President to conceive and 
advocate a comprehensive, permanent waterway policy for the 
improvement of the nation’s rivers and harbors; he was wise enough 
to see that only by adopting a fixed policy which will remove the 
subject from the mutations incidental to our form of government 
can we achieve the priceless and lasting benefits of water transpor¬ 
tation approximating those brought about by the consistent policies 
of European governments. 

With rare prescience he showed the country the necessity of 
improving its waterways, roused us from the apathy with which we 
have regarded the subject, and crystallized into definite form the 
vague and inharmonious views with which it was contemplated. 

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT, 

In his speech in St. Louis, October n, 1910, in discussing the 
waterway question with President Kavanaugh, of the Lakes-to-the 
Gulf Deep Waterway Association, said: “It was largely because of 
this organization that I began to take a keen interest in the project. 

“The waterway problem is of interest and importance to every 
part of the country, here in the Mississippi Valley especially. Here, 
if you start to improve navigation, you begin with a great bay, and 
you end with the great inland ocean of the lakes. 

“We are absolutely certain, ultimately, to improve the Missis¬ 
sippi. The problem is one which must be considered by the best 
experts. It is vital that it should be done right. I am certain that 
it will be done. 





What Presidents Have Said About Our Waterway 33 


“In Europe I was impressed with the communications by water. 
They cheapen from 3 to 4 and 6 per cent the cost of transportation 
on all bulky freight. We’ve got to shape the boats for the water¬ 
way as well as the waterway for the boats.” 

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT, 

At the Conservation Congress in St. Paul, September 6, 1910, said: 
“One of the greatest of our conservation problems - is the wise 
and prompt development and use of the waterways of this nation. 
The Twin Cities, lying as they do at the head-waters of the Missis¬ 
sippi, are not upon the direct line of the proposed Lakes-to-the- 
Gulf Deep Waterway. Yet they are deeply interested in its prompt 
completion, as well as in the deepening and regulation of the Missis¬ 
sippi to the mouth of the Missouri and to the Gulf. The project 
for a great trunk waterway, an arm of the sea, extending from 
the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes, should not be abandoned. 

“The Lakes-to-the-Gulf Deep Waterway, and the development 
of the rivers which flow into it, should be pushed to completion 
vigorously and without delay. 

“No man can foresee the limit of the possibilities of develop¬ 
ment in the Mississippi Valley. Such being the case, and this Valley 
being literally the heart of the United States, all that concerns its 
welfare must concern likewise the whole country; therefore, the 
Mississippi River and its tributaries ought by all means to be utilized 
to their utmost possibility. Facility of cheap transportation is an 
essential in our modern civilization and we can not afford any 
longer to neglect the great highways which nature has provided 
for us. These natural highways, the waterways, can never be 
monopolized by any corporation. They belong to all the people and 
it is in the power of no one to take them away. * * * The 
Mississippi should be made a loop of the sea and work upon it 
should be begun at the earliest possible moment. * * * Adequate 
funds should be provided by bond issue, if necessary, and the work 
should be delayed no longer.” 






34 What Presidents Have Said About Our Waterway 


WILLIAM H. TAFT. 

In a speech before the Lakes-to-the-Gulf Deep Waterway 
Convention in Chicago, 1908, when then a candidate for the presi¬ 
dency, said: “The question of the systematic improvement of our 
inland waterways is one which our Government has all too long 
neglected. And so it is that after the first century of our existence, 
we find our inland waterways, with few notable exceptions, unpre¬ 
pared for the uses of transportation, but the consideration of their 
permanent and extensive improvement according to some general 
and comprehensive plan so as to mould them into a complete system 
of transportation, has now forced this upon us with surprising 
suddenness. 

“We find that the enormous increase in the productions of our 
people in all lines of industrial activity has outstripped the ability 
of our great railroad systems, extensive and efficient as they are, to 
transport them. We find that during the ten years ending with 
1905, the internal commerce of our country has increased 118 per 
cent, while railroad transportation facilities during the same time 
have increased only 20 per cent. It has been pointed out that to 
supply this deficiency by the construction of additional railroads and 
necessary terminals, would require a capital investment of $5,300,- 
000,000, and this construction, when completed, would make no 
provision for the further increase of our commerce. Shall we have 
a repetition of the experience of three years ago, when the farmer 
saw his grain wasting in the field and the manufacturer stopped 
his plant for want of raw material, and our finished products lay in 
the warehouse, all for lack of facilities to transport them? 

“A commodity, raw or finished, is of little or no value until it 
has reached the place of its use. We can not stop now in our 
onward course of utilizing the natural resources of our country. 
We can not curtail or limit the production of our manufacturers. 
We must go on, for a contrary course means disintegration and 
decay. Transportation, then, is the question of the hour. How 
can we solve it? We must have recourse to our waterways. 

“No nation has been favored with so magnificent a system of 
navigable lakes and rivers, reaching in their providential distribu- 









What Presidents Have Said About Our Waterway 35 


tion every section of the great valley lying between our east and 
west mountain ranges and of the slopes from these to their respec¬ 
tive coasts. If we improve these in accordance with a well defined, 
progressive policy we shall, in conjunction with our great railroads 
and other forms of transportation, keep pace with the industrial 
and commercial advancement of our country. 

“I am not unmindful of the great expenditure of public money 
which the prosecution of such a policy will entail. The expense of 
carrying an article from the place where it is to the place where it is 
wanted,' must be added to its cost, whether it be in its raw or finished 
state. Therefore its cheaper carriage results in a saving to that 
extent. As transportation by water is about one-sixth of that by 
rail, a great saving apportioned between the producer and consumer, 
and hence among all our people, would follow. 

“My own judgment is that every great improvement like that of 
the Lakes-to-the-Gulf channel should be treated by itself as one of 
great enterprise, and that provision should be made by bonds or 
otherwise. 

“Your project proposes to connect by a deep waterway the 
Great Lakes system with the Mississippi River and the Gulf of 
Mexico, and thus with all the harbors of the world. It is a grand 
conception, and appeals to the thoughtful consideration of those 
who must finally pass upon its adoption. The Mississippi River, 
with its great tributaries, drains an empire vastly greater in all the 
resources of nature than those who accomplished the acquisition of 
that mighty stream and the territory beyond it.” 

WILLIAM H. TAFT, 

In a letter to Governor Charles S. Deneen, of Illinois, April 17, 
1911, said: “The project for a navigable waterway from Lake 
Michigan to the mouth of the Illinois River and thence via the 
Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico, is one of national importance 
and commands my sympathy.” 





36 Daniel Webster 


DANIEL WEBSTER. 

Extracts from a speech delivered by Daniel Webster, Decem¬ 
ber 2, 1846, to merchants and other citizens of Philadelphia: 

“Let us contemplate for a moment the Mississippi. This noble 
and extraordinary stream, with seven or eight millions of people on 
its banks, and on the water falling into it, absolutely calls for 
harbors, for clearing out rivers, for the removal of snags, and other 
obstacles to safe navigation. Who is to do this? Will any one of 
the States do it? Can all the States do it? Is it the duty appro¬ 
priate of any State, or any number of States? No, no, we know it 
is not. We know that unless this government be placed in the 
hands of men who feel that it is their constitutional authority and 
duty to make these improvements, they will never be made, and the 
waters of the Mississippi will roll over snags, and snags, and snags 
for a century to come. 

“These improvements must come from the Government of the 
United States, or in the nature of things they can not come at all: 
and I say that every steamboat that is lost by one of these snags, 
every life that is sacrificed, goes to make up a great account against 
this government. Why, what a world is there! What rivers and 
what cities on their banks! Cincinnati, New Orleans, St. Louis, 
Louisville, Natchez and others that spring up while we are talking 
about them, or, indeed before we begin to speak of them, commer¬ 
cial marts, great places for exchange of commodities along these 
rivers, which are so many inland seas, as it were.” 

Wheeler’s History of Congress, pages 406-407, Vol. 2. 

DANIEL WEBSTER. 

Extract from address by Daniel Webster to the citizens of 
Pittsburg, July, 1833: 

“The East is old, pretty fully peopled, and small. The West 
is new, vast and thinly peopled. Our rivers can be measured, yours 
can not. We are bounded, you are boundless. The West was. 
therefore, most deeply interested in this system, though certainly 
not alone interested even in such works as had a Western locality. 








The Chicago Platform , IQ 08 —Republican 


To clear her rivers was to clear them for the commerce of the whole 
country; to construct harbors, and clear entrances to existing harbors, 
whether on the Gulf of Mexico or on the lakes, was for the 
advantage of that whole commerce, and if this were not so, he is a 
poor public man whose patriotism is governed by the cardinal 
points, who is for or against a proposed measure according to its 
indications by compass or as it may happen to tend further from, or 
come nearer, to his own immediate connections. And look at the^ 
West! Look at those rivers—look at the lakes—look especially at 
Lake Erie, and see what a moderate expenditure has done for the 
safety of human life and the preservation of property in the naviga¬ 
tion of the lake, and done, let me add, in the face of a fixed and 
ardent opposition.” 

Wheeler’s History of Congress, page 405, Vol. 2. 


THE CHICAGO PLATFORM, 1908. 

Republican. 

In the Chicago platform the planks declaring for the conser¬ 
vation of the natural resources and in favor of the improved water¬ 
ways are grouped together, and are expressed in these words: 

“We indorse the movement inaugurated by the administration 
for the conservation of natural resources; we approve all measures 
to prevent the waste of timber; we commend the work now going 
on for the reclamation of arid lands and reaffirm the Republican 
policy of the free distribution of the available areas of the public 
domain to the landless settler. No obligation of the future is more 
insistent, and none will result in greater blessings to posterity. In 
line with this splendid undertaking is the further duty, equally 
imperative, to enter upon a systematic improvement, upon a large 
and comprehensive plan, just to all portions of the country, of the 
waterways, harbors and Great Lakes, whose natural adaptability to 
the increasing traffic of the land is one of the greatest gifts of a 
benign Providence.” 






38 The Denver Platform , IQ 08 — Democratic 


THE DENVER PLATFORM, 1908. 

Democratic. 

With the assembling of the convention at Denver, the question 
of waterways and their improvement was presented, by its own force 
of merit, as it was at Chicago—the question in both conventions 
being one without political tinge—and the delegates at Denver incor¬ 
porated the following plank in their platform, with the unanimity 
that had prevailed at Chicago, the plank relating to the conservation 
of the natural resources being separate and distinct from the water¬ 
ways plank, which is as follows: 

“Water furnishes the cheapest means of transportation, and the 
National Government, having control of the navigable waters, 
should improve them to their fullest capacity. We earnestly favor 
the immediate adoption of a liberal and comprehensive plan for 
improving every watercourse in the Union which is justified by the 
needs of commerce, and, to secure that end, we favor, when prac¬ 
ticable, the connection of the Great Lakes with the navigable rivers 
and with the Gulf through the Mississippi River, and the navigable 
rivers with each other, and the rivers, bays and sounds of our coasts 
with each other by artificial canals, with a view to perfecting a sys¬ 
tem of inland waterways to be navigated by vessels of standard 
draught. 

“We favor the co-ordination of the various services of the 
government connected with waterways in one service, for the pur¬ 
pose of aiding in the completion of such system of inland water¬ 
ways ; and we favor the creation of a fund ample for continuous 
work, which shall be conducted under the direction of a commission 
of experts, to be authorized by law.” 






Commercial Highways to the Ocean 

By Hon. O. P. AUSTIN, 

CHIEF OF THE BUREAU OF STATISTICS, DEPARTMENT 
OF COMMERCE AND LABOR 

The subject of improved commercial highways from our interior 
to the seaboard through deeper waterways from the Lakes-to-the- 
Gulf appeals to me mainly because the Mississippi Valley is a greater 
distributor to the requirements of man than any other similar tem¬ 
perate zone area of the world. 

The importance of more and better highways to the ocean, 
despite the network of 240,000 miles of railway co-operating with 
our rivers and lakes as carriers of our commerce, becomes apparent 
when certain conditions now obtaining in the commercial world are 
considered. I call your especial attention to three facts having an 
important relation to the question, the proper solution of which 
your Convention is seeking to find: First, the enormous increase in 
facilities for ocean transport during recent years; second, the won¬ 
derful expansion of international commerce, now aggregating- 
more than thirty billion dollars a year, which has come as a result 
of better facilities for ocean transportation; and, third, the rapid 
development of production and producing power in the Mississippi 
Valley, thereby intensifying the need of adequate facilities for the 
prompt and economical transfer of its merchandise from the place of 
production to the ocean, that great international highway already 
well supplied with commerce carriers. 

Carrying power on the ocean is now twenty-five times as much 
as at the beginning of last century and has actually doubled in less 
than twenty years; while the world’s great railway system has been 
created within the memory of men now living. As a result of this 
enormous increase in the carrying power, many articles formerly 
not considered as possible subjects of international commerce are 
now passing from continent to continent and country to country in 
enormous quantities, and the international commerce of the world 
is twenty times as much as in 1800, and has doubled in the last 
twenty-five years. 


40 Commercial Highways to the Ocean 


Meantime, the producing power of the United States and her 
contributions to international commerce (most of which must be 
carried on the ocean) have enormously increased. Within the last 
twenty years our production of wheat and corn has increased 50 
per cent; that of cotton has doubled; that of coal has trebled, and 
that of iron and steel, and copper, and petroleum, has more than 
quadrupled, and the value of manufactures exported has grown 
from $150,000,000 to $750,000,000. 

This increase in production has occurred chiefly in the interior 
of our country. The center of population, which at the beginning 
of last century was within a short distance of Baltimore, has moved 
steadily westward almost to the Mississippi. The center of manu¬ 
factures has moved, since 1850, from the vicinity of Harrisburg, 
Pa., to Central Ohio in 1900; the centers of production of corn, 
and oats, and cotton, and coal, and iron, are almost upon the banks 
of the Mississippi, while the centers of wheat production and of 
farm area are now hundreds of miles west of that stream. What 
wonder, then, in view of the fact that the centers of population, of 
manufactures, of manufacturers’ materials, and of the principal 
food supplies, have all moved westward until they have reached the 
very heart of this great country, that the question of the facilities 
for transportating these articles to the ocean steamship lines which 
wait to carry them to the commercial world, is demanding renewed 
consideration at this time. 

But, say the objectors to this demand for increased transporta¬ 
tion facilities, the United States has already the best and largest 
railway system of the world, and therefore does not need to expend 
vast sums upon its waterways to add to the carrying facilities already 
so abundant. Let us see about that. We do not want, any of us, 
to decry our railway system, of which we are justly proud; but there 
are various ways by which the availability of a railway system, 
however great and elaborate, may be tested. It is true that our 
railroads show a much greater length in total number of miles than 
those of any other country, and a greater mileage per capita than 
in most countries; that their cars are larger in capacity, and the 
cost of transportation per ton per mile less than in most of the 





By Hon. O. P. Austin 


41 


other countries of the world. But does that prove that our rail¬ 
roads are sufficient to conduct the transportation business of so large 
a number of busy people distributed over so large an area as that 
of the United States? Let us see how our facilities in this particular 
compare with those of certain other countries, countries which, by 
the way, have found it advisable to, in recent years, develop their 
waterways for use in conjunction with the railways. The length 
of railways in the United States for each 1,000 square miles of terri¬ 
tory is, speaking in round terms, 60 miles; in Germany, 165 miles; 
in France, 140 miles; in the Netherlands, 164 miles; in Austria- 
Hungary, 101 miles; in the United Kingdom, 189 miles, and in 
Belgium, 398 miles for each 1,000 square miles of territory. Thus, 
in all of these European countries which I have mentioned— 
Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Austria-Hungary, Belgium 
and Netherlands—the number of miles of railway for each 1,000 
square miles of area is much greater than in the United States—in 
most cases from 100 to 200 per cent in excess of our own. Yet 
every one of these countries, with possibly one exception (the 
United Kingdom), have seen fit in recent years to expend large 
sums of money in constructing and maintaining canals, canalizing 
rivers, and otherwise developing water-carrying facilities for use 
in conjunction with their liberal supply of railways, which far exceed 
our own when considered from the proper standpoint of the rela¬ 
tion of length of line to the area which it is to serve. 

The United States has become the world’s greatest producer 
of cotton, of corn, of wheat, of coal, of iron, of steel, of copper, of 
manufactures. These are produced in the far interior of our great 
country, and must be sent to the ocean for transportation to the 
world’s markets. To transport them to the ocean we must have 
ample carrying facilities. Why, then, ought we not follow the 
examples of our most successful commercial rivals, who have 
developed and are still developing their waterways for use in con¬ 
junctions with railway systems twice or thrice as great as our 
own in proportion to the area which they serve? They are our suc¬ 
cessful rivals in the great commercial world, and their success has 
been due. in no inconsiderable degree, to the elaborate transporta¬ 
tion facilities supplied for the interchange of commodities among 







42 


Commercial Highways to the Ocean 


themselves or for the transportation to the seaboard and thence to 
other parts of the world of that class of merchandise which con¬ 
fronts our manufacturers when they attempt to enter the markets of 
the world. 

The next great question which arises is whether this condi¬ 
tion, by which the interior of our country has become a great pro¬ 
ducing area, is to continue, and whether we shall, as the decades and 
centuries pass, continue to be the world’s foremost purveyor of 
articles of international commerce, and thus require the continued 
services of great highways to the ocean. 

North America has between its great mountain ranges at the 
east and west the greatest and most productive drainage Dasin of 
any of the continents, and that that basin is more advantageously 
located as to soils, rainfall, climatic conditions, and transportation 
facilities, natural and artificial, than any other of like extent in any 
part of the world. That area lies chiefly within the section of North 
America which we call the United States, most of which is occupied 
by this great Mississippi Valley. 

Once a submerged continent, with those elevated ranges which 
we now call the Appalachian and the Rocky Mountains rising as 
inlands above that prehistoric ocean, with its chief area the bed 
of that ocean, the marine deposits of centuries, of ages, gave to its 
bed the basis of a soil containing the important requirements of 
plant life. Then, when the subsidence of the ocean, or the elevation' 
of the lands, or both, brought that former ocean bed above the water, 
and the action of the elements in disintegrating the rocks gave it a 
soil able to produce vegetation, nature did other things to add to its 
supply of soil and soil material, and thus its permanent producing 
power. The great ice cap which at that later period covered the 
part of North America which we now call Canada, pushed its 
glaciers southward into the northern half of the glacial front, 
extending from New England, Western New York and Pennsyl¬ 
vania among the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys following nearly 
the present line of the Mississippi River, and down the Pacific 
Coast, bringing into that section from the far North the soil and 
the rocks which its very action ground into the elements to form 







By Hon. O. P. Austin 


43 


additional soil, thus giving to the northern half of our great country 
an abnormally rich and deep soil. At the south, that arm of the 
ocean which we call the Gulf of Mexico then extended much farther 
north than at present, covering with water that area which we now 
call the lower valley of the Mississippi as far northward as the junc¬ 
tion of the Ohio, and the basis of a rich soil thus supplied was further 
enriched, as the Gulf receded, by the washings from the mountains 
and hills and valleys at either side. 

Thus we find in a large share of our area an unusually—shall 
I say abnormally?—favorable condition of soil, a soil almost inex¬ 
haustible in depth, in richness, and in producing capacity. 

But there are other things which nature has done and is still 
doing for this country. A rich and deep soil is of little value without 
a water supply, and this important requisite of productivity—or life, 
in fact—nature has given us, not in unbounded quantities (for in 
some sections of the world the supply is so excessive as to retard 
rather than favor agricultural utilization), but with such adjustment 
to requirements of temperate zone life as to assure regularity, and 
thus reliability, in the power of production of the great requirements 
of man—food and clothing. 

The reliability of rainfall is largely due, especially in the 
Mississippi Valley, to natural conditions which must continue to 
exist as long as the earth revolves to the east and the present relation 
of land and water bodies obtains. The rapid revolution of the earth 
toward the east, more rapid than that of the air which surrounds it, 
causes a steady westward flow of air over its surface, especially in 
the vicinity of the equator, where climatic conditions compel a rapid 
evaporation of the water at the surface of the ocean. This current 
of air, passing over the Atlantic in the vicinity of the equator where 
the intense heat causes great evaporation, reaches the Gulf charged 
with moisture and, deflected northward up the valley of the Missis¬ 
sippi, and cooling as it rises and moves northward, precipitates its 
precious burden of moisture in the form of rains, rendering reliably 
fruitful the abnormally rich soil which other conditions of Nature 
have given to this valley. 









44 Commercial Highways to the Ocean 


We have here a great land mass with ranges of mountains on 
either side, and lying between them a great valley. Its waters at 
the extreme north flow into Hudson Bay at the east and in the lake 
region into the Atlantic, at the west to the Pacific, while in great 
area west and south of the lakes, and between the mountain ranges, 
they flow to the Gulf, the large proportion of them concentrating 
in the center of the valley. All this great intermontane valley of the 
Mississippi, as large as all Europe except Russia, once the bed of the 
ocean and later enriched at the north by the glacial period, has an 
unusually rich soil. It has, also, a temperate zone climate, capable 
of affording great production, and, what is equally important, giving 
vitality and energy to its inhabitants. It has an unusually reliable 
rainfall, especially in the eastern half, through the presence of air 
currents which bring the moisture from the Atlantic and Gulf and 
when cooled discharge it in the form of rain. We shall see that 
the area of this continent supplied with an equable rainfall in con¬ 
junction with a temperate zone climate is far greater than that found 
in any other of the continents. Lastly, its rivers, which have a 
greater navigable length than those of any other grand division, 
flow by gentle gradient into the ocean, while in many other parts of 
the world the rivers flow into land-locked seas or through such steep 
and rocky passageways as they approach the sea, as to reduce their 
value for purposes of navigation. * * * 

The chief producing section of this great country lies in the 
central valley, and this requires highways to the ocean. Of the 
acreage in farms in the entire United States, 70 per cent is found 
in the area lying between the Alleghenies at the east and the Rockies 
at the west; of the value of farm property, 69 per cent; of the wheat 
produced in the United States, 76 per cent; of the live stock, 72 per 
cent; of the corn. 85 per cent; of the food animals—cattle, 74 per 
cent; sheep. 52 per cent, and hogs, 81 per cent; of the wool, 55 per 
cent; of the cotton, 70 per cent; of the iron ore, 69 per cent; of the 
lumber, 47 per cent; of the petroleum, 69 per cent; and of the coal 
for turning these articles into form fit for use or for transporting 
them to the consumer, 60 per cent of the bituminous and 50 per cent 
of the total product of the country. All of these, be it remembered, 
are produced at points so located, geographically, as to be susceptible 







By Hon. O. P. Austin 


of transportation at easy grade toward the Lakes or the Mississippi 
River, and thence by water to the ocean. So favorable are the nat¬ 
ural conditions of this great interior valley that the facilities for 
assembling these natural products at almost any given point for 
manufacturing or other preparation for use are, to say the least, not 
merely exceptional, but unequaled in any other country of the world. 
What wonder, then, that the share which the great interior valley 
supplies of the manufactures of the United States has grown from 
27 per cent in 1870 to 30 per cent in 1880, 35 per cent in 1890, and 
38 per cent in 1905 ? What wonder that the wealth of that valley 
has grown from nine billion dollars in 1870 to fifty billions in 1904, 
and that the proportion which its wealth forms of the total of the 
country has grown from 37 per cent in 1870 to 47 per cent in 1904? 
What wonder that the interior valley contains 52 per cent of the pop¬ 
ulation of the continental United States and that its people expended 
in 1907 $150,000,000 for public schools, or 52 per cent of the total 
public expenditure of the United States? 

Now, just a word about the future. I have shown you that the 
great interior of our country, that section which must have highways 
to the ocean, has at the present time a large share—more than half 
in every instance—of our great factors pf industrial activity, inter¬ 
national commerce, and general prosperity. Will this condition con¬ 
tinue? Will this valley continue to supply not only its share of these 
principal products of the United States, but continue to contribute 
a surplus to the requirement of the world? To this, I think, we 
may unhesitatingly answer, yes. The estimated coal supply of the 
United States is over 3,000,000,000,000 tons, and of this enormous 
deposit, 83 per cent, according to the statement of those preparing 
this estimate, lies between the Alleghenies and the Rocky Moun¬ 
tains. Of the petroleum area of the country, 54 per cent lies within 
this valley; of the acreage in farms, 70 per cent is already in that 
valley, and we may assume that nearly all of the lands likely to be 
added to the farming area lie within this section. Of the iron, the 
copper, the wool, and the cotton areas of the country, so large a pro¬ 
portion lies within that valley that it will continue to increase rather 
than decrease its share in the manufacturing output of the country, 
and that it will continue to contribute not only to the wants of our 





46 Commercial Highways to the Ocean 


growing population, but furnish for many years, for generations, a 
generous surplus for other parts of the world. It is not improbable 
that as the years pass the proportion of our food supply which we 
can spare for exportation will somewhat diminish, but we may con¬ 
fidently expect that the proportion of our manufacturing material 
which we turn into the finished form before sending it to other parts 
of the world, will greatly increase. 

All this means that while we shall still increase our exportation, 
manufactures will form an increasing share of our exports. The 
world appreciates the value of our manufactures, it accepts them 
readily, if offered in a form suited to the local wants of the con¬ 
sumer. We have the world’s greatest supply of the natural mate¬ 
rials, and of the coal with which to turn them into the finished form; 
and it is within the power of this country to continue to be the 
world’s greatest workshop as well as the world’s greatest purveyor 
of natural products, but we must have plentiful and cheap transpor¬ 
tation with which to assemble the raw materials and transport the 
finished product to the ocean. 

Now, as to foreign markets and the facilities for reaching 
them: The whole civilized world is now a market. With the world¬ 
wide growth of transportation facilities on land and water, of great 
steamships which penetrate to every continent and island, and of 
railways which carry the products to the interior—every country, 
every island, every community, every home, has become a market 
for the products, whether natural or manufactured, of any indus¬ 
trious people willing to put forth the energy to produce these articles 
in the form required by those various markets and send them to the 
doors of those willing customers. And in this particular, of trans¬ 
portation to other parts of the world, nature has again given to us 
exceptional opportunities, while the art of man is also preparing an 
additional contribution to those natural facilities, in the form of the 
Panama Canal, which will permit our products to pass direct to the 
west and south, as they now do to the east. At the very point at 
which the products of this valley touch the Gulf or the Atlantic, they 
find another great current of water, the Gulf Stream, a river in the 
ocean, ready to lend its aid in transporting them to the greatest 









!By Hon. O. P. Austin 


market of the world, Europe. Its flow toward the east and north is 
more rapid than that of the Mississippi River, averaging from 50 to 
100 miles per day, and it thus adds materially to the ease and swift¬ 
ness of the transportation of our products, from the moment they 
reach the waters of the Gulf until they are well on their way to the 
markets of Europe. Another great stream, the Pacific Equatorial 
Current, not so swift, but of much greater length, passes the very 
door of that artificial waterway which our government is now cut¬ 
ting through the Isthmus of Panama. It flows steadily from near 
the western end of the proposed Panama Canal straight across the 
Pacific Ocean past our Hawaiian and Philippine Islands to the coast 
of that other great market of the world, Asia, with a regular, even 
flow, averaging perhaps twenty-five miles per day, thus adding to 
this extent to the facilities of transportation toward the Orient. Its 
northward deflection along the eastern coast of Asia and return flow 
across the North Pacific to our own coast also gives to our vessels 
the aid of favorable currents on the return trip, thus increasing the 
speed of the vessel movements in the entire trip from the Panama 
Canal to the Asiatic shores and the return by way of the North 
Pacific and our western coast. 

Still another advantage which the merchandise of this valley 
will have on the opening of the canal will be found in the markets 
of Western Latin-American and our own Pacific Coast. 

The markets of Europe, measured by their imports in the latest 
available year, amounted to $10,000,000,000; those of A'sia to which 
a new and direct route will shortly be open, $2,000,000,000; those 
of the western coasts of the North and South American Continents, 
$250,000,000. To those of Europe we have already direct access, 
but our opportunities there will advance as we increase the facilities 
of cheap transportation from the great interior to the ocean. 

Low freight rates are of especial importance in these days when 
business is conducted on small margins of profit; for, say what you 
may of the great business combinations, and the high prices, which 
are chiefly the result of dear raw materials and well-paid labor, the 
world’s business is being conducted on a constantly reducing mar¬ 
gin of profit. Cheap transportation is, then, an absolute requisite to 





48 Commercial Highways to the Ocean 


the success of the great industrial and commercial country, and 
water routes properly developed and maintained, operated in harmo¬ 
nious relation with other transportation systems, do give these 
cheap rates. 

The price of transporting wheat by rail over the 1,000 miles 
of railway between Chicago and New York has averaged ten cents 
per bushel during the past seven years. During the same seven- 
year period the price of transporting wheat across the Atlantic from 
New York to Liverpool, a distance of 3,000 miles, has averaged 
three cents per bushel, or one cent per bushel for each 1,000 miles, 
using round terms in all these statements. On the railways ten cents 
per bushel for 1,000 miles; on the ocean, one cent per bushel for 
1.000 miles. And, remember, that these railway rates were made 
with a dozen transportation systems competing for the business— 
via Canada, via the Great Lakes, via the half dozen railway lines to 
the east, and by the various lines which reach tide water on the 
Gulf of Mexico. 

Another striking illustration of the cheapness of water trans¬ 
portation is found by comparing freight rates on the Great Lakes 
with those on the railways of the country. The ton-mile rates re¬ 
ceived on all the railways of the country averaged, in 1906, .77 of 
1 cent per mile. The government reports of the business passing 
through the Sault Ste. Marie Canal, connecting Lake Superior with 
Lakes Huron and Michigan, and which carries a traffic more than 
twice as great as does the Suez Canal, shows the average cost of 
carriage .80 of 1 mill per ton-mile. The average receipts per mile 
on the railways in 1906 were .77 of 1 cent per mile, or nine and one- 
half times as much on the railways as on the Lakes. 

I do not assert that these figures are absolutely comparable. In 
case of wheat rates from Chicago to New York, and New York to 
Liverpool, the land haul is but 1,000 miles and the ocean haul 3,000 
miles. In the case of the Sault Ste. Marie Canal the articles carried 
are chiefly the great staples more easily handled and occupying little 
space, such as wheat, flour, iron ore, copper, lumber and coal; and 
the average distance which they are carried greater than that of the 
miscellaneous freight handled on all the railroads of the country. 







By Hon. O. P. Austin 


49 


But the great contrast in rates, the fact that railways on an average 
carry practically ten times as much per ton per mile as do the water 
carriers, justifies the general assertion that water carriers can, and 
do, give a much cheaper service than the railways. The country 
which can project an arm of the ocean through the land to its very 
center, as a ship canal to the Great Lakes would do, will add enor¬ 
mously to its industrial and commercial possibilities. 

What, then, is the one thing lacking to make the great interior 
valley the greatest commercial and industrial section of all the 
world? Deep-water transportation from the Great Lakes to the 
Atlantic and Gulf. Is this thing possible? Yes. Is it feasible? 
Yes. Look again at the map of North America. A ship canal 
across Southern Michigan and another from the eastern end of the 
Lakes to the Atlantic would enable ships which load at the lake cities 
to pass direct to the Atlantic and thence across the ocean to Europe. 
A ship canal from the Lakes to the South would enable other ships 
which load at the Lake ports to move southward and, entering the 
Gulf, pass thence through the Panama Canal, to the Pacific Ocean, 
to the western coast of all America, and to the eastern coast of all 
Asia, and return laden with the products of the Orient. 

Do you ask me again is it feasible ? For answer I point you to 
the work now in progress on the Isthmus of Panama. Who can 
doubt that a nation which is building, in a tropical climate, a canal 
capable of carrying the world’s largest ships over a great mountain 
range would, when this is finished, be able and willing to build 
another which should carry other ocean vessels to the heart of her 
greatest producing section, the greatest producing area of the world, 
especially when Nature has done so much to aid this work, as is the 
case in the Mississippi Valley or in the Lake region ? 













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